In the 1980s the relaxation of many cultural restrictions, especially on pop music, also contributed to the development of the so-called "liumang" or "hoodlum" culture of "China's urban, Bohemian fringe [of] artists, unemployed youth, private entrepreneurs, [and] rebellious students" (Jones 163). Liumang culture, like that of the intellectuals, expressed its dissatisfaction with Chinese culture through "an almost identical rhetoric; one that takes as its focus the critique of [the] feudalism" that persisted, they argued, in the corruption of the socialist state (Jones 153).
The protesters of 1989 were, in many respects, repeating the basic situation of the students and intellectuals who had fomented the May Fourth protests of 1919. That protest movement had begun as a demonstration against the government's acquiescence in the terms of the Versailles treaty (which robbed China of territory) and expanded into "an encompassing critique of the traditional values that underlay corrupt warlord politics" (Schwarcz 171). Artists and intellectuals in 1919 "claimed they had a special role and duty as intellectuals to lead the nation's citizens in a fight to 'save the nation'" and the protesters of 1989 had originally planned their demonstration to coincide with the anniversary of the 1919 events (Wasserstrom 5). The protesters of 1919 had employed two symbols, the figures of "Mr. Democracy" and "Mr. Science," as tokens of their desire to see China open itself to some outside influence while remaining essentially Chinese. These themes were repeated in the 1989 protests and had formed the major themes of protest in the arts during the 1980s. Significantly, however, the Democracy Uprising of 1989 did not take place at the exact time when it might have been expected. Instead the death of Hu Yaobang, "the former general secretary of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] who had been dismissed from office two years before for his lenient handlin...